Ivan Kal - What War Had Wrought

With no choice, he ordered two of his fleets to slow and protect the rest; he was already losing more ships than he had anticipated, and if he was going to fulfil the rest of his mission and start attacking other Empire systems, he would need every ship. The Empire war fleet kept firing at his back, and he was losing ships fast, as they were focusing on retreating.

The defense stations were proving themselves an incredible threat. One of his fleets managed to get through one station’s shields and inflict damage to the massive thing. Seeing as the rest of his fleets had managed to move out of their range, he recalled the two fleets and left the stations drifting slowly in space, useless when his ships had left the range of their weapons. The Empire’s war fleet was still in pursuit, but their inferior speed meant that his fleets would have no more problems. He knew that they would use their FTL drives again, but a single fleet was not as big of a threat as their stations were.

Hanaru looked at his subordinates. “Relay the order for the fleets to scatter per the plan,” he ordered. The eight fleets would split into four groups of two fleets each, and leave the system through hyperspace, then attack already chosen systems through the Empire’s territory.

As his fleets prepared to scatter, alarms blasted across his ship and his holo went offline.

“What happened?” Hanaru asked angrily.

“We don’t know, Weaver, our systems overloaded. Bringing everything online now.”

A moment later, the holo came back online, only there was a large hole in the middle of his formation.

“Where are my ships?”

“We don’t know, Weaver, they are gone,” his subordinate answered stupidly. “Checking records now,” the subordinate added, and Hanaru waited impatiently.

“Just before the overload, the scanners detected a large source of energy buildup… And there was some kind of energy surge passing through the middle of our formation.”

“What kind of energy surge?”

“We don’t know, Weaver… We are getting data from other ships now…” He read through the data for a moment or two before turning back to Hanaru. “The energy was a weapon of some kind, Weaver. Our ships… they have been destroyed.”

Hanaru looked at his subordinates incredulously. A weapon that could destroy more than three thousand warships in a moment?

“Show me the source.”

A moment later, the holo changed to show him the image of the system’s sun, and there in its orbit, entirely too close to the sun itself, was a massive station, its surface illuminated by the clearly visible shields and several openings in its hull that were pointed at his fleet.

“There is another energy build up from the station, Weaver.”

Hanaru hesitated only a moment before speaking. “Scatter the fleets, now!”

The command room in the Fleet Headquarters erupted in cheers as the Star-Guard One station punched a hole in the Erasi numbers. Almost three and a half thousand ships, gone in an instant, an entire fleet.

“How soon can they fire again?” Laura turned and asked Oswald.

Oswald leaned to look at the holo. “They drained their capacitators to fire that beam. To fire another one like that? It will take them days to charge the capacitators enough. But they can fire a smaller beam, one every twenty minutes.”

“How big of a beam?”

“Around two hundred meters across.”

“Will it lose on power?”

“No, not at this range. If the Erasi move past the Eurus orbit, then yes, the weapon can’t reach that far,” Oswald answered.

“Contact Nair, tell him to be ready to split his fleet into small taskforces to hunt down the Erasi ships. I think that the Erasi commander will figure out that the only way he can minimize the losses from Star-Guard One is to spread his ships thin.”

Hanaru watched as the Empire’s station fired at his fleets again, this time a much smaller beam but one that still destroyed one hundred and forty ships. The beam passed through everything, hitting every ship and burning all that it touched. Eleven of his super battleships exploded as the beam burned holes through them. Several ships were hit and managed to survive, as they caught the edge of the beam, and a few more managed to survive while being crippled and unable to move.

The Empire’s fleet continued chasing them, firing missiles, as Hanaru tried to organize his ships. Then another beam swiped through the fleets, destroying another ninety-three ships. Seeing no other course, Hanaru ordered them to scatter so that no ship was directly behind another, which would make his fleet more vulnerable to the Empire’s ships but would ensure that the station would only be able to take out one ship at a time.

But while his ships moved, the station managed to fire two more times, destroying another two hundred and thirty-three ships. Hanaru had come to this system with ten fleets, almost twenty thousand ships. And he had lost just over seven thousand, far more than what he had believed he would lose. And as the Empire’s station kept destroying his ships, that number kept getting higher. Then the Empire defense fleet disappeared, entering their FTL, and less than a minute later, they appeared again.

The Empire had split their fleet in two, and each had attacked smaller elements of his fleets. In order to protect his ships from the Empire’s station, he had made them vulnerable to their ships. With their FTL—and smaller recharge times for their ships—they would be able to overcome his smaller groups and destroy them with numbers advantage. His fleets were all heading towards the hyperspace barrier in different directions, but the Empire would still be able to catch them with their FTL drives. Hanaru checked the distances and started calculating the timing. Some of his forces would be able to get away, but only a fraction of what he had thought he would have.

With no other choice, he contacted the two fleets that had just finished a bombing run on the installations at the third planet, and ordered them to leave the system and go directly to the fallback system, not continuing to the next Empire system. Once he escaped this system, Hanaru would have far fewer ships than he had planned for initially, and would need to adjust his plans. Splitting his forces might not be a good idea anymore.

As Hanaru was thinking on how best to continue his mission in the future, a beam of energy ripped through his ship, evaporating his command center and him in it. His life ended with no warning, and just a moment after his super battleship was destroyed, a new fleet entered the Empire’s system through one of its trans-lanes.

Nair watched as the Erasi battleship exploded under the fire of one of his dreadnoughts, and close after the last Erasi ship in this small group. He was no longer using the Watchtower interface, as there was no need; this was no longer a fleet action. His ships were hunting down the Erasi in small groups. Nair glanced at the timer and saw another seven minutes before his ships could enter skim and hit another group of Erasi ships.

“Fleet Commander,” an Adjutant called from his right. “Warpath’s Vanguard has arrived. They are placing themselves at your command and are asking where you want them.”

Nair smiled at the good news. “Send them the priority groups, and let them pick a group and start destroying Erasi ships. Warn them to check with Fleet for Star-Guard fire; we don’t want them to skim to somewhere where the station will fire.”

Nair turned back to the holo and studied the fleeing Erasi ships. There were still more of them, but they couldn’t gather in anything larger than a dozen ships; otherwise, Star-Guard would kill them faster. Their only remaining action was to run and hope that they got to the hyperspace barrier faster than the Empire could destroy them.